

Most of the usages of に I've seen have it directly followed by a verb directly
attached to it. (The location of existance **にある/にいる** , The action objective
**e.g 私は電車に乗りました** , etc)

I know there are some that don't directly have に follow a verb, but its still
heavily reliant on a verb **(私は六時に家を出る)**

However, に can also be used when there are no verbs in the sentence

> 私に必要です Or 私には必要です

  * I interpret (at least the first sentence) as [smth] is essential to [me] or 私*

I (somewhat) get the fact that に and には mean kinda different things and are to
be differentiated, so i will just refer to the first sentence.

What usage does the **に** fall into here? Is there a certain way it gets
applied in any sentence with only a noun/ adjective (as in it gets used the
same way/ means the same thing)

_Other maybe-related examples i found_

> タバコは体に悪い。 The way i see it (i guess) is that the に marks that tabacco is 悪い
> towards/ for the body/体. But why can't we use something like が here?

> 私に何か用ですか。 I guess this sentence works in a similar way to the 必要 one,
> labelling 私 as "What will i use/ be in use for me"

Sorry if this seems like an obvious question, but im genuinely stumped.

(Edited to explain how i see it)


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grammar particles particle-に
に followed by nouns, what is its usage?


As I said in my comment, the particle に can be rendered as _in, on, at, to_ or
_for_. It depends on the context which you’ll use.

* * *

にある/にいる identify where something (ある) or someone (いる) is. Lest you be confused
by my parentheses here ある means _is_ for nonanimate things (hence _something_
); いる means _is_ for living things, not just people (as _someone_ might
imply). In either case, ある/いる only mean _is_ in the sense of location in
space.

For example, に shows where something is. Here we’re talking about an animate
object, a cat.

> ねこは家にいる  
>  The cat is **in** the house.

Here’s an example with an inanimate object, a book.

> 本はつくえの上にある  
>  The book is on the desk.

* * *

Let’s look at some of the examples you posted.

> 私は電車に乗りました。  
>  I got **on** the train.

Here に shows what you got _on_ or _in_ to ride someplace.

* * *

> タバコは体に悪い  
>  tobacco is bad _for_ your body

Here に is best rendered as _for_

In a comment you asked why you couldn’t use が here. First, タバコは体が悪い, just
doesn’t make sense. To see this a bit consider omitting talking about
_tabacco_

> 体が悪い

would be saying

> The body is bad

* * *

Your next example involved an expression of time. In time expressions に is
usually rendered as _at_.

> 私は六時に家を出る  
>  I leave the house at six

* * *

As for

> 私に必要です

This just means (literally)

> It’s necessary for me.

or (more loosely but depending on context)

> It’s important to me.

* * *

Your last example is somewhat idiosyncratic from the point of view of English
and depending on your familiarity with other languages that have similar
constructs, it may or may not come easily to you.

> 私に何か用ですか。

Generally this might be rendered fluently as

> Do you need _me_ for anything?

where the _for anything_ is how I’m translating 何か; it has nothing to do with
the particle に here. The わたしに part is just translated as _me_.

But this translation obscures what’s happening in the Japanese because in
English this is the most natural way to render this particular type of
question.

However a more strictly literal translation might make the grammar of this a
bit more clear

> Is there some kind of need _for_ me?

Basically what you have here is the idiomatic expression

> 何か用ですか

This is just the standard way of asking, “is there something I can do for
you?”

You can modify this form to express different but related ideas. For example,
if you said something like

> この本に何か用ですか

you be asking “do you have some kind of need (intended use) for this book?”

* * *

As you can see, you selected a diverse variety of uses for に. In a Japanese
language class, each of these might be handled in separate lessons.


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I want to offer a different approach to the question, because there seems to
have been a misconception here. Particles like に _don't really care what
they're followed by_.

> Most of the usages of に I've seen have it directly followed by a verb
> directly attached to it.... I know there are some that don't directly have に
> follow[ed by] a verb, but its still heavily reliant on a verb

Consider in English:

"I give a ball to the dog."

"I give the dog a ball."

Either way, there are clearly three participants in this action. They can't
_all_ be adjacent to the verb, but this doesn't cause a problem.

Similarly in Japanese. The case particles が, に, を, で come _after_ a noun that
they're marking, and indicate the role that this noun plays for a
corresponding predicate (normally a verb, sometimes an い-adjective). They
don't inherently restrict what comes after, except that there should be a
predicate they correspond to. Some specific situations allow for
implying/omitting that predicate, but **there are no such examples here**.

Back to English: in these examples, "the dog" is grammatically an _indirect
object_. The direct object of "to give" is the thing that changes ownership;
the indirect object is the recipient - that's all baked in to the meaning of
the verb. On the other hand, I could say "I reward the dog with a treat", and
now the recipient is the direct object.

We can also see that English has many strategies for marking an indirect
object: by relying on word order, or by using a variety of different
prepositions.

In Japanese, に is most readily explained as a generic marker for an indirect
object. There are places where that model will break down, but only when we
try to explain it from an English point of view. で is related to に, both
etymologically and in its use/meaning; the distinction is out of scope here.

> However, に can also be used when there are no verbs in the sentence

These examples **have a verb**. Or else, how did you understand です?

必要です is analyzed two different ways:

  1. だ・です is simply an inflection for nouns that turns them into verbs. In this model, 必要です is just the verb "to be 必要". Thus, the unspecified thing is 必要 _for_ you.

  2. です is understood as a contraction of であります, or perhaps でございます; similarly だ as simply である. Either way, this makes it a combination of the _case particle_ で (which is therefore marking the previous noun: in this case, 必要) and... a verb that doesn't quite match English, but in this case is probably best rendered "to exist". Thus, the unspecified thing exists 必要-ly, for you - it is in such a state, that it is 必要 for you.

But either way, there is a verb there, and 私 plays its に role.

> タバコは体に悪い。 The way i see it (i guess) is that the に marks that tabacco is 悪い
> towards/ for the body/体. But why can't we use something like が here?

Now we have an example using an い-adjective for the predicate instead of a
verb. But this is really the same thing, because [Japanese doesn't really have
adjectives, depending on how you look at
it](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/1008).

タバコ, marked as a topic (what we're talking about), is also implied to be a
grammatical subject (which would otherwise be marked with が, but is normally
omitted here). We can't say 体が because that would replace タバコ as the subject
(subject and topic may differ). In English, something like "when it comes to
tobacco, the body is bad." (English doesn't explicitly mark topics, and the
interpretation is ambiguous - but all the options are nonsense in this case.)
The に marks 体, not タバコ. The sentence already told us that tobacco is bad; 体に
tells us _how_ it's bad - i.e. who or what is affected by its badness. We
can't use を, either, _for the same reason_ we can't say "tobacco is bad you"
in English (without the "for").

Re 私に何か用ですか, anything I could say would be redundant with the other answer.


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